Populating a DataTable with reflection

Question

I want to populate a DataTable using reflection, not knowing what the column types will be at compile time. I'm going to have an object that implements an interface, say IData.

I want the DataTable column schema to reflect the object fields, and the rows of the DataTable to come from a list of IData objects.

So far I have ...

var listOfData = GetIDataListImplementation();

    var dataTable = new System.Data.DataTable();

    var first = listOfData.FirstOrDefault();

    var type = typeof(fist);
    var props = mainType.GetProperties();

    // Create Table
    foreach (var prop in props)
    {
        dataTable.Columns.Add(new System.Data.DataColumn(prop.Name, prop.PropertyType));
    }

    // Populate Table
    foreach (var dataItem in listOfData)
    {
// STUCK HERE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO
        System.Data.DataRow row = dataTable.NewRow();
        for (int i = 0; i < mainProps.Length; i++)
        {
// HOW DO I GET THE OBJECT PROPERTY VALUE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TABLE COLUMN?
            row[mainProps[i].Name] = dataItem;
        }
    }

As you can see I'm stuck at the point of actually populating rows with property values of the associated object property type.

Answer 1

You're mostly there, you should be able to do this:

foreach (var dataItem in listOfData)
{
    DataRow row = dataTable.NewRow();

    for (int i = 0; i < props.Length; i++)
    {
       row[i] = props[i].GetValue(dataItem);
    }

    dataTable.Rows.Add(row);
}